After five brutal years of austerity and recession, Greeks are voting under clear skies in a high-stakes election that could put their country on a collision course with the European Union.

Looking confident and relaxed, the Syriza leader Alexis Tsipras strode smiling up the steps of a primary school in the Kipseli neighborhood of Athens to cast his vote in bright mid-morning sunshine.

Final opinion polls on Friday showed his radical leftist party, which has pledged to overturn austerity and renegotiate Greece’s debt mountain, holding a comfortable lead of between four and seven percentage points over its main rival, the incumbent New Democracy.

If Greece had their own currency all along they could probably just scratch the debt, shout fuck you, and start again. The low value would indeed attract tourists in droves for a good recovery.

But tied within the euro I think he'll end up negotiating a re-structuring of it, looser terms, a bit shaved off like before with the 'debt haircut' as they called it, and that's about it. I don't think he'll actually go apeshit and bin the whole currency if they refuse his terms.